Meet Mike Pence’s Namesake: ‘Other’ Mike Pence Has No Love Lost For VP-Elect

[Guest Nicole]

It isn’t easy these days being Mike Pence’s namesake. Mistaken identities are not unusual for people with common first and last names, but if you’ve got the same name as a lawmaker who has earned a lot of controversy for his beliefs and background, things can get quite difficult indeed. Just ask the “other” Mike Pence, who shares a name with the U.S. Vice President-elect, but is a completely different person in every known way.

A report from the Telegraph looked at the story of software developer Pence, whose Twitter account, @mikepence, has supposedly received a barrage of tweets meant for Donald Trump’s controversial running mate. Ironically, this Mike Pence doesn’t appear to be very fond of his more famous namesake, recently quoting one of the more memorable lines from the 1999 comedy Office Space. That line was delivered by a character named Michael Bolton, who shared a name with the much-maligned real-life singer.

Apart from tweeting that Office Space meme last night, software engineer Mike Pence poked more fun at his namesake by listing himself on his Twitter profile as “not a Christo-fascist politician.”

The Telegraph didn’t go into depth into the nature of the tweets unintentionally sent to the 49-year-old software developer but meant for the vice president-elect, but he did speak to NYMag‘s Brian Feldman in July, well before the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, and soon after Donald Trump named Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

At that time, he used an American flag as his Twitter avatar, possibly confusing users, and he did get some cringe-worthy “hate-tweets from the left,” but he nonetheless decided to add some levity to the situation.

“I can’t begin to catch up with the mentions of @mikepence on Twitter. On the one hand, it has been hugely entertaining, since I get to troll conservatives a bit by pretending to be in a love affair with @realDonaldTrump using my account. On the other hand, any hope I had of actually using Twitter to have conversations with the many amazing software engineers that I know is pretty much on hold until the governor is (hopefully) no longer the talk of the moment.”

While Mike Pence the Vice President-elect is a hardcore conservative Christian with a history of anti-LGBT-related controversies, Mike Pence the software developer appears to be the exact opposite. He described himself to NYMag as a “liberal, atheist, ex-Jehovah’s Witness computer programmer,” and “not a bigoted shill for the Republican party.”

He did, however, admit to growing up homophobic and conservative due to his Jehovah’s Witnesses upbringing, which he has since renounced.

“I deeply regret how I behaved toward gay people and how I shunned those who grew to believe differently than me. That is not love, and that is not the kind of person I want to be, nor is it the kind of thinking I want to see in elected officials.”

Meanwhile, the unintentionally-notorious Twitter user @mikepence has gotten his share of support from people who would rather have him in power than the Indiana Governor/Vice President-elect. Users have tweeted calls for the “other” Mike Pence to be Vice President instead, while he’s also gotten sympathetic tweets from other people with far more popular namesakes, such as a user named Chris Brown (like the R&B singer), and even one who is apparently named Michael Bolton.

Still, the confusion is quite understandable, due to the timing of the creation of both Mike Pences’ respective Twitter accounts. According to Mashable, the “not-famous” Pence from Florida opened his account in April, 2007, while the Vice President-elect had opened his two accounts in August, 2008, and February, 2009.

For many people, it wouldn’t be fun to be mistaken with someone who’s very much in the public eye. But for Florida resident Mike Pence, the whole namesake thing doesn’t appear to have affected him too much, even if he did admit to facing some challenges.

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